High Level Plays

play level: high

[mattmakesgames-blog]

The Triple Boop Open TowerFall tournament was last night in Oakland! Here’s the grand finals. If you click through, the playlist includes videos of all the matches. The competition was intense and there were some amazing plays. So many miracle catches!

Congrats to King of Elks on winning, and Zecmo for taking second place!

[highlevelplays]

Kill breakdown

I thought it might be fun and educational to do a breakdown of the kills from the first round that happened between me and zecmo last night at the Triple Boop Open. Just going to give my feedback watching the kills and thinking why things did or didn’t work.

Kill 1 - Slow-mo downward diagonal kill:

This is a bread and butter kill for my style of play because I like to bait people into actions and then initiate an attack right as I’m safe. With slow-mo happening, I can see that my initial attack has failed, and that I’m headed into a bad corner. zecmo has rolled-doddged and so is still in cool-down. As I’m escaping out of the corner, I want to get an arrow off to try and catch him in cool-down. At the same time, I’m already moving quickly to gain high ground, as well as putting myself out of reach from any extra danger. 

Kill 2 - Hypebooping is super effective in open areas:

Not much to see here - zecmo just perfectly times a downward boop as I’m trying to run away and around the corner. 

Kill 3 - Speculative arrows can catch you by surprise

This is a really cheap opening moment kill but it’s an important one to think about. Treasure chests are perfect spots to fire speculative arrows into hoping your opponent will basically run into them. I tend to get a lot of kills like this and my hunch is because I fire arrows very early, catching players off guard even if they know going after treasure is dangerous. In this case, zecmo dashes probably a little too early and koalas on the corner. 

Kill 4: Miracle grabs don’t work as often as they do for me

This is a missed miracle grab. zecmo gets into position super quick and fires an up arrow to pin me into the wall. I avoid miracle grabbing at all cost, because frankly I’m not very good at them. 

Kill 5 - Hypering isn’t always about the boop. It’s about the setup. 

zecmo hyper dashes into the wall sconce which actually pushes him down and blocks my path of egress. In fact, here, he bumps me backwards and manages to get the last arrow just as my dash extension expires. Using terrain like this to help set up angles for attack is probably the most underrated aspect of competitive play. 

Kill 6 - Terrain is the difference between life and death

Again, this is an example of using the wall to my advantage. I know that zecmo can’t diagonal up arrow me here. Which means the only way to defend his position is to shoot straight up. Which means it will take him a bit more time. Since I’m already dropping, I think it’s worth the risk to come in for the boop even though he’s got a lot of arrows. 

Kill 7 - The smallest angles can make a difference.

Similar setup here. I know zecmo has to come across which gives me more options in setting up my attack. If you notice, I dont’ hug the wall here. I actually drift back out to set up a diagonal arrow. This means that if he hypers, I can boop him, but if he tries to pull up for a shot, I can at least tink his attack, or catch him early with my arrow. Keep in mind, arrows home quite a bit, so if he tries to go left and escape, a diagonal arrow has a good chance of catching him.

Kill 8 - Herding your prey 

This is excellent play by zecmo. First, coming down off the vertical, he moves to the outside paltform which puts him into good position to anticipate where I might go. Then, moving into the moving platform, he evades my attack and coems in for a diagonal kill. But notice that he’s moving always to the right here. Even if he misses or I catch arrows, he’s putting himself in position to keep up pressure. 

Kill 9 - Tinks are underrated. 

In general, I prefer tinking arrows to catching or evading. The main reason is that it allows me to continue my line of movement. Towerfall is all about understanding egress and limiting the possible areas where your opponent can go. By tinking the first arrow, I maintain my speed and direction which allows me to get down quickly enough to catch zecmo as he’s falling. At the same time, because I haven’t already used my dash, I’m ready to go to pick up the counter attack just in case (and thank god I did!).

Hope this was helpful for anyone out there. Hit me up on twitter if you have other thoughts or feedback!